


5 times Burger told Vang0 he loved them +1 time Vang0 listened

by Eiso



Series: hanahaki au [1]
Category: Let's Play Cyberpunk Red - Polygon (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, Love Confessions, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26386492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiso/pseuds/Eiso
Summary: "It started small enough, Burger didn’t even notice. He and Vang0 were sitting in the back of the van, Vang0 was streaming sixnite and doing just as well as ever -- which is to say: not well at all but trying their best -- and made a stupid comment about a player’s outfit and Burger laughed so hard he choked."
Relationships: Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz
Series: hanahaki au [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950241
Comments: 12
Kudos: 42





	5 times Burger told Vang0 he loved them +1 time Vang0 listened

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the pcpr discord server for this idea! it was a ton of fun to write  
> general tw for discussion of death, in particular one scene where a character thinks they're about to die

1.

It started small enough, Burger didn’t even notice. He and Vang0 were sitting in the back of the van, Vang0 was streaming sixnite and doing just as well as ever -- which is to say: not well at all but trying their best -- and made a stupid comment about a player’s outfit and Burger laughed so hard he choked. Vang0 let go of the controller to pound him on the back and got killed as they were momentarily distracted from the game, so they just ignored the stream for a moment -- only two people were watching anyways -- and leaned against Burger, looking up at him with a smile so bright he felt like he was looking at the sun, and of course Burger loved them, he loved them so much and told them so at the slightest provocation, but all at once he realized that he was _in love_ with Vang0 -- their quick wit and blunt, stumbling speech and sharp gaze and loud clothes and that stupid mustache. Burger’s breath caught in his throat and he closed his eyes for a second as his worldview shifted and everything suddenly made just that little bit more sense.

“Hey, Burger, pay attention Burger, I’m gonna get at least three headshots this run, I swear!” Vang0 bumped their shoulder into Burger’s arm, glaring at him with no real anger, “You have to watch so you can tell Dasha how cool I’m gonna be, she never believes me when I tell her!”

Burger opened his eyes and focused on the screen again, murmuring an apology as Vang0 sat back up and resumed playing, and spent the rest of the stream revelling in how nice it felt to have Vang0 sitting at his side, yelling at the screen and promising that “this time I’ll get in the top ten I swear, Burger you believe me don’t you, this was just a fluke, you distracted me with your stupid shiny jaw,” and laughing and leaning their weight on him and slowly drooping their head onto his shoulder as the hours went by and saying that “it’s getting pretty late isn’t it, I’ll just stay the night here, there’s plenty of room,” and casually flopping sideways to rest their head on Burger’s lap and falling asleep while Burger gently ran his hand through their hair and it felt like his heart was climbing into his throat with how much he loved them so he said so and Vang0 sleepily blinked up at him and said

“Yeah yeah, don’t get any ideas big guy, it’s just a long walk to get home,”

And the bubble of emotions that was welling in Burger’s chest popped, and his stomach sank, and he realized that Vang0 knew how he felt, and didn’t love him back.

2.

The first sign something might be wrong was the coughing. It was an itch in the back of Burger’s throat and mostly it was just an annoyance -- they were on a job and Dasha was talking circles around a mark while Vang0 hacked into the computer not three feet behind them and after the fourth time Burger interrupted her when the tickle in his throat resolved itself into a hastily muffled cough, she sent him back to the van to “go get a juicebox, Burger, for fucks sake,” so he sat in the front seat sipping his CapriSun and wishing there was someone he could punch. When the other two sprinted out of the building with security hot on their heels, a little black pill clutched triumphantly in Vang0s upraised fist and a smile on their face that made him breathless, Burger wasted no time gunning the engine and getting them out of there, the guards left behind in the dust.

“You getting a cold there, buddy? You were coughing a ton back there,” Vang0’s voice was strained with some emotion, but Burger couldn’t quite tell if it was concern or annoyance, so he was quick to reassure them that he was fine, it was probably just allergies or something. “Are you sure? You don’t look allergic, have you checked your temperature?” Burger hadn’t, but he didn’t feel sick so he was sure the cough would clear up in a couple days.

The topic was dropped, but later that day Vang0 turned up with a carton of chicken soup -- made with real chicken, holy shit, where did they get their hands on that -- and insisted that Burger eat the whole thing. After the first bite, Burger expressed his deep and undying love and Vang0 grinned -- well, Burger thought it was a grin but, it seemed somewhat forced, is all -- at him and said

“We can’t have the team muscle getting sick, who will slam peoples’ heads into the concrete when things go wrong if you’re not around? Finding a replacement would be such a drag,”

And maybe Burger _was_ getting sick, how could he have forgotten that Vang0 wasn’t interested, and he was making them uncomfortable, and he probably shouldn’t mention his feelings again.

3.

The confusing part was the petals. Burger had assumed at first -- when it had been two weeks and the cough hadn’t gone away and his lungs were burning and he couldn’t quite catch his breath -- that he had caught pneumonia or something, which wasn’t _great_ , given that medicine was expensive and it wasn’t like he was exactly rolling in cash, but Hypo was a friend and could hook Burger up with some cheap antibiotics and Dasha had rolled her eyes but offered up her living room floor while he recovered and Vang0 had somehow managed to get real chicken soup twice more -- seriously, who were they blackmailing to get real meat, did they have dirt on some high end butcher or something -- and all in all Burger really loved his friends and made sure to tell them so on a daily basis. The thing was, the antibiotics weren’t working, and now Burger had woken up coughing at like three in the morning and he was spitting up petals and he didn’t know what was happening. He stared down at the bright pink and white petals in confusion before another coughing fit overtook him and yep, those sure were flower petals that were coming out of his mouth. What the actual fuck. Burger had never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the box, in fact, he was just smart enough to realise that he wasn’t very smart at all, but he was pretty sure that pneumonia didn’t cause you to cough up flowers, so apparently he’d wasted that favor from Hypo for nothing. Dasha was going to be _pissed_.

Burger pulled up his agent -- it was down to six percent, he really needed to remember to charge it -- and searched for any disease that involved spitting up flower petals, but there was nothing on any of the forums and really tech was more Vang0’s thing anyways, so he tossed the petals aside and made a mental note to ask Hypo in the morning if he knew anything. As he turned over to go back to sleep, soft footsteps came up to him and Vang0 sat themself down next to him on the mattress.

“I heard you coughing, are you alright? Shouldn’t the meds have kicked in by now? Maybe we should check Hypo’s sources, he should probably know if the antibiotics he’s giving people are defective you know,” Vang0’s voice was probably a bit too loud for what time it was, but the righteous outrage in their sleep roughened voice made Burger’s heart race as he smiled and reassured Vang0 he was already planning to go over to Hypo’s tomorrow, and couldn’t resist telling them that their pushiness was one of the many reasons he loved them, and in response Vang0 said

“Wow, rude, how dare you call me pushy!”

And Burger apologizes but he’s not really apologizing for the pushy comment and he knows Vang0 knows that and they lay down and rest their head on his shoulder so really everything will be alright.

4.

So apparently he was dying, or something. He showed Hypo the flowers and Hypo used a “steckostope” to listen to his lungs and apparently he had a rare genetic disorder called Hanahaki and if he didn’t confess his feelings to the person he loved the flowers would keep growing until he suffocated and died and, well, Burger couldn’t count the number of times he’d told Vang0 he loved them but maybe he’d said it wrong so he’d give it another shot but he wasn’t really sure what else he could do different and the only other alternative was a cybernetic augmentation that would replace his lungs -- with the small side effect of _removing his emotions_ what the actual fuck -- and it was far to costly to consider both in monetary terms and in the general cost it would have to his soul, so Burger was pretty sure he was going to die. At least he knew what was going on now, he could process, he could prepare, he could keep this information to himself because Dasha wasn’t that sort of fixer and there was no way he was putting this on Vang0, this was his own fault for being too stupid to figure out the right way to tell Vang0 he loved them, for missing something he was sure would be obvious to anyone else, for apparently growing a fucking dogwood tree in his chest and wasn’t that a trip -- Hypo said dogwoods were “for rebirth, undying affection, and forgetting, guess I don’t have to work too hard to figure out who you’re pining for, huh? At least it’ll be easy enough for you to tell them and fix it,” except Burger has already told them so many times and he doesn’t know how to fix this at all.

He walked back to Dasha’s apartment in a daze, and confessed his love for Vang0 when he saw how they had completely ruined breakfast -- there was a lot of smoke -- and Vang0 laughed and said if he really loved them he’d get some bagels from down the street, “they’re so fucking good Burger I could eat them forever,” and the petals didn’t go away.

He watched Vang0 stream sixnite and laughed at their jokes and shoved blossoms into his pockets when Vang0 wasn’t looking and confessed his love for them when Vang0 called themmself “so stupid, I should have seen that guy, what was I thinking” because how dare Vang0 talk about someone Burger loved like that and Vang0 bumped shoulders with him and apologized and the blossoms didn’t go away.

Burger and Dasha threw Vang0 into the ocean while they squirmed and protested and complained and he confessed his love for them as he reassured them that this was for their own good, really, they hadn’t taken a break for a week and Vang0 said “sure, sure, some friend you are, how could you betray me like this” and pulled Burger into the water with them and Dasha stood on the shore and laughed and Burger laughed and then coughed and then hastily pushed the blossoms out to sea and the flowers didn’t go away and didn’t go away and didn’t go away.

5.

The blossoms were coming fast now. Burger thought he probably had a whole tree in his chest by this point, and he liked to imagine that when he finally kicked the bucket in the not too distant future his corpse could serve as fertiliser so that the tree could grow and thrive and blossom in the sunlight instead of the dark confines of his lungs, and maybe once in a while Vang0 could come visit him and lean back against his trunk and rest their head on his bark and he could shade them from the sun that still didn’t hold a candle to their laugh and their smile and maybe he could take care of them even after his body had finished betraying him. But this was Night City, and there was nowhere for a tree to grow so probably Burger’s body would be dumped in the nearest crematorium and all his flowers would turn to ash and Vang0 wouldn’t forget him exactly -- Vang0 was very particular about remembering everything they possibly could -- but Burger would be filed away in their mind and not thought about unless it was useful for a job and he didn’t want to die he didn’t want to leave his friends he didn’t want to never hear Dasha’s belligerent swearing and Vang0’s stammer and he was dying he was going to die and he would never see them again and Vang0 would never again lean up against him and fall asleep in his lap with his hand running through their hair and he didn’t want to die and he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breath he was coughing and choking and he couldn’t br--

He came to with his head in Vang0’s lap and Dasha holding his hand and berating him under her breath because how could he “have been so stupid you should have told us you idiot we could have, well, I’m not sure what we could have done but we would have figured something out, Hypo could have --” Burger cut her off with a coughing fit, and both her and Vang0’s eyes snapped instantly to his face.

“Burger, what’s going on, why are you coughing up flowers, seriously what the hell?” Vang0’s voice was frantic and their eyes were darting everywhere and their hair was askew and they had never -- well, actually, they had definitely looked more beautiful, Burger didn’t like seeing his friends upset and no one actually looks good when they’re crying, but they were still a welcome sight in the midst of this absolute shitshow. Burger choked out the relevant details in as few words as possible -- he had this stupid rare disease and the treatment was too expensive and for some reason the home cure wasn’t working so there was nothing for it, really, but to find somewhere peaceful to shuffle off this mortal coil -- and had to watch as his friends’ faces fell and Dasha turned away to punch a wall and Vang0 stood abruptly -- dumping Burger’s head onto the concrete, which, ow -- and started pacing frantically, grasping at their hair -- oh, that's how it got so disheveled -- and Burger managed to say that they should calm down, it was okay, he had come to terms with it -- that was a lie but it was a lie to help his friends and that’s an okay situation in which to lie -- and that he was just glad to spend the time he had left with his friends, and could they maybe find a nice patch of dirt to bury him in when all this was over?

Dasha looked like she wanted to kick him but she didn’t because he already couldn’t breathe and she walked back over and helped him sit up against a wall and then slumped down to sit next to him and rested her head in one palm while the other found Burger’s hand, and gritted out that “this is really happening, isn’t it?” and Burger wanted to reassure her but all his focus was on breathing past the coughing and the flowers that were almost constant now and Vang0 wasn’t looking at him, was resting their head against the side of the van and it would be so nice if Burger could hold their hand too, please, because he loves them so much and would like to comfort them, please, and maybe they could comfort him a little in turn, please, and oh he said that out loud and Vang0 is walking to him and they say “Of course I’ll hold your hand but don’t you _dare_ try to comfort me right now this whole situation sucks and if you die I’ll never forgive you,”

And Burger didn’t want Vang0 to be mad at him and he figured one last try couldn’t hurt, so he reached up and pulled Vang0 in for a kiss and Vang0 was kissing him back and suddenly he could breathe.

+1.

So it turns out Burger isn’t going to die after all. Nothing in the world has tasted sweeter than the air Burger is breathing as he and Vang0 sit in the back of the van, Vang0 streaming sixnite and doing as well as ever -- which is to say: not well at all but trying their best. They throw the controller against the door as they die for the thirty-seventh time and shut off the stream with a huff, and lean against Burger and look up at him and reach up for a kiss and Burger wraps his arm around them and pulls them close and whispers in their ear how much he loves them and they direct their brilliant smile at him and say

“I love you too,”

And Burger smiles, and they rest their head on his shoulder, and he thinks he’s never been happier.


End file.
